Finding the molecular basis of quantitative traits

Genetics, Genomics

In nature, most individuals vary by small degree, rather than descrete differences. For example, human height varies by degree not by presence or absence of height. Similarly, we see variation in skin and eye colour, susceptibility to several diseases such as diabetes, cancers, cardiac disorders. This kind of variation is brought about by multiple interacting genes and these characters are called quantitative traits. However, dissection of the genetic factors determining quantitative traits is difficult because of the multiple causal genes, each of which can contribute varying amounts to the character. Recent advances in molecular genetics and biology have provided methods to identify genes involved in these complex traits at a very high resolution. Yeast has become an excellent model system to study these traits at high resolution. We use yeast as a model to address some of the basic questions and fundamental genetic principles governing these traits.

Publications

1. Fraser HB, Levy S, Chavan A, Shah HB, Perez JC, Zhou Y, Siegal ML, Sinha H (2012) Polygenic cis-regulatory adaptation in the evolution of yeast pathogenicity. Genome Research 22: 1930
2. Gagnuer J, Sinha H, Perocchi F, Bourgon R, Huber W, Steinmetz LM (2009) Genome-wide allele- and strand-specific expression profiling. Molecular Systems Biology 5: 274
3. Sinha H, David L, Pascon RC, Clauder-Muenster S, Krishnakumar S, Nguyen M, Shi G, Dean J, Davis RW, Oefner PJ, McCusker JH, Steinmetz LM (2008) Sequential elimination of major-effect contributors identifies additional quantitative trait loci conditioning high-temperature growth in yeast. Genetics 180: 1661
4. Sinha H, Nicholson BP, Steinmetz LM, McCusker JH (2006) Complex genetic interactions in a quantitative trait locus. PLoS Genetics 2: e13
5. Ito-Harashima S, Hartzog PE, Sinha H, McCusker JH (2002) The tRNA-Tyr gene family of Saccharomyces cerevisiae: agents of phenotypic variation and position effects on mutation frequency. Genetics 161: 1395
6. Steinmetz LM, Sinha H, Richards DR, Spiegelman JI, Oefner PJ, McCusker JH, Davis RW (2002) Dissecting the architecture of a quantitative trait locus in yeast. Nature 416: 326